Ship Seizures

As you all have read, a ship (owned by an Irvine industrialist) valued at more than $2 million was seized by the Coast Guard in international waters. When boarded and searched, authorities found about one-tenth of an ounce of marijuana. A far cry from a huge amount, but nonetheless illegal, according to the new government narcotics law. Within a very short time, this vessel was released after paying certain fees and fines totaling less than $2,000. In the past, other vessels were seized under the same law, not quite as big and not quite as expensive, but these vessels are still being held or have been sold.

Greenpeace activists occupied an unmanned oil company vessel in the Arctic Ocean for a second day Tuesday in a protest against the company's offshore oil development in Alaska. The environmental group said five activists were on a vessel holding a BP Amoco control center and staff living quarters being towed to a construction site for the Northstar oil project in Prudhoe Bay, the site of Alaska's largest oil field.

Coast Guard and Customs Service officials said Friday that they planned to relax their controversial "zero tolerance" policy, under which federal agents have seized yachts, fishing boats and research ships after finding tiny amounts of marijuana on board. Under growing pressure from Congress and irate boat owners, the officials said they intended to modify the program to avoid penalizing innocent boat owners whose guests or crewmen were found with small quantities of illegal drugs.

Russian officials demanded that the U.S. Navy release a Russian tanker being held in the Persian Gulf while its oil is tested, apparently to see if it came from Iraq in violation of U.N. sanctions. A Navy spokesman confirmed that the Akademik Pustovoit was stopped Wednesday in international waters. "We had reason to believe that the ship was involved in smuggling illegal Iraqi gasoil," Vice Adm. Charles Moore said in Manama, Bahrain.

A suit by the federal government asks that a Yugoslav ship that ran aground and destroyed coral beds be condemned and sold in order to pay penalties for damaging the marine ecosystem. The suit claims the freighter Mavro Vetranic was not seaworthy and its crew incompetent when it plowed into a fragile coral reef in the Florida Keys on Oct. 30. U.S. marshals seized the ship when it arrived at the Port of Miami.

Mark Laws has no problem with Coast Guard officials launching a stern new effort to combat drug smuggling on the high seas. But "they've gone overboard," the Marina del Rey boat captain declared, with their "zero tolerance" crackdown, which has resulted in the confiscation of more than two dozen craft ranging from sailboats to shrimp boats to tugboats, from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico, since mid-April.

Federal authorities had hoped for a hefty sum Thursday when they auctioned off a 65-foot fishing trawler seized in an international drug-smuggling case. They got $10. "As far as I know, it is lowest bid for a ship in Rhode Island since the state entered the Union in 1790," U.S. Marshal Donald Wyatt said.

Federal agents seized 45 tons of marijuana and hashish Tuesday and arrested five family members, including the former cellmate of "The Falcon and the Snowman" spy Christopher Boyce. Thirty tons of hashish and 15 tons of marijuana were under the deck of a barge seized along with its 72-foot tugboat as it slipped beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. The primary suspect, Calvin Robinson, 47, of Corning, Calif., was servinga federal forgery sentence at Lompocin 1980 when his cellmate, Boyce, escaped.

A ship carrying more than 70 tons of marijuana was towed into port Wednesday by a Coast Guard cutter that seized it on the high seas for not flying a flag and refusing orders to stop. Sixty rounds were fired by the crew of the Boutwell last Friday into the engine of the Panamanian-registered Encounter Bay after the vessel refused to stop.

The Coast Guard said it seized a 55-foot fishing boat off the coast of San Diego on Wednesday after finding less than an ounce of marijuana and a small amount of what appeared to be methamphetamine aboard the vessel. The boat, the Maria Elena, was in international waters 75 miles west of San Diego when Coast Guard personnel boarded it about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, according to Charles Embleton, a Coast Guard spokesman in Los Angeles.

Faced with a sharp increase in smuggling of Iraqi oil in defiance of a U.N. embargo, the U.S. Navy seized a Russian-flagged tanker in the Persian Gulf and ordered it to port, where chemical tests can be made to determine the origin of its cargo, the Clinton administration said Thursday. The Russian Foreign Ministry protested the seizure and demanded immediate release of the ship and its crew. Moscow said the cargo was from Iran, not Iraq. However, U.S.

Eighteen people have been charged with trying to smuggle 156 illegal Chinese immigrants into the United States. Assistant U.S. Atty. Alberto Arevalo said the defendants, indicted by a federal grand jury Monday, entered not guilty pleas in U.S. District Court. The ship carrying the immigrants, the Chih Yung, was stopped off the coast of Baja California, Mexico, by the U.S. Coast Guard Aug. 27 and detained offshore until Friday, when it was escorted into the San Diego Naval Station.

A fishing trawler seized on the high seas for attempting to smuggle Chinese immigrants into the United States was escorted into port by a Coast Guard cutter Thursday. The 150-foot Jinn Yin No. 1 was intercepted Tuesday in the Pacific Ocean about 400 miles off San Diego after the Coast Guard captured the yacht Liberated Lady with 85 immigrants aboard in U.S. waters three miles off San Pedro. The immigrants were from China, U.S. authorities said.

A Polish fishing vessel accused of operating illegally in American waters was seized in the Bering Sea by the Coast Guard and was being escorted Tuesday to a port in the Aleutian Islands, authorities said.

The government said Saturday that a "peace boat" detained by blockading Western navies has been forced to unload its cargo in Oman. The Ibn Khaldoon, carrying 250 women peace activists and a cargo that included food, was halted in the Arabian Sea last month by Australian, British and U.S. warships enforcing the U.N. trade embargo.

Soviet authorities on Saturday released a Greenpeace ship seized in icy Soviet seas north of the Arctic Circle during a protest against the Kremlin's plans to resume testing of nuclear weapons there. They expelled the ship, the MV Greenpeace, from Soviet waters, and freed without charge four activists who had landed on the forbidden territory of the Novaya Zemlya testing range.

Iran's navy hijacked an Arab tycoon's yacht with five members of Kuwait's royal family and four Britons aboard and was holding them for ransom, news reports said Sunday. Government information officers in Kuwait, Bahrain and other Persian Gulf states said that they had no information about the incident, which reportedly occurred Thursday. "We're very puzzled by the Kuwaiti report," said a Bahrain-based shipping source.

Two California tuna boats--one from San Pedro, the other from San Diego--are in custody in La Paz after the Mexican navy seized them Saturday for violating territorial waters. But a spokesman for the Western Fishboat Owners Assn. in San Diego said Monday that no violations of international fishing laws were involved and that no charges have yet been brought. Bob Pringle, owner of the San Diego-based Karen Christie, said he was in touch with its skipper, Steve Anderson.

The Soviet coast guard Monday fired warning shots at a Greenpeace ship carrying anti-nuclear activists who were protesting plans to resume the testing of nuclear weapons in the Arctic, the official Tass news agency reported. The coast guard vessel, an icebreaker operated by the KGB, the Soviet security and intelligence agency, then put armed sailors aboard the MV Greenpeace to escort it out of the Barents Sea, Tass said.

"I try to be aggressive in my patrol area," said Cmdr. Kevin J. Cosgriff, skipper of the U.S. Navy ship that fired one of the first rounds of the confrontation in the Persian Gulf. His ship is the guided-missile frigate Robert G. Bradley, and its motto is "Power to Prevail." Cosgriff, a thoughtful, 41-year-old New Yorker, is using all the power the Bradley has to enforce U.N.-mandated economic sanctions against Iraq. With other U.S.